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• Amy Katoh
• Kumamoto Castle
• Uchiwa
• Enoden
• Ekiben
• The On Matsuri
• Kusatsu Onsen
• Interview with a Geisha
• 'Anime' Fatasy at the Ghibli Museum

Kaori Yamada

February 2005

by Robert Cameron
Photos by Daisuke Ito

One of the most prominent of the younger generation of bonsai artists is Kaori Yamada. The daughter of one of the most famous bonsai artists in the country, she is well-known not only as a artist in her own right, but also as a TV personality (she appears on the government-run NHK network) and teacher, with her own school based in her home in Omiya, Saitama Prefecture, near Tokyo. All this exposure is making her the face of the new generation of bonsai artists.

She's still a bit surprised at the way her life has turned out; it wasn't supposed to be like this. She grew up in Omiya, known as "Bonsai Town," the only daughter of Tomio Yamada, the fourth generation of a family of renowned bonsai masters. He was a serious artist and rigid disciplinarian, and their relationship was somewhat strained. "I hated bonsai, hated the business, wanted nothing to do with the whole bonsai world," she remembers. She left to attend Rikkyo University, and studied economics and marketing.

While on a trip to France, she visited a flower garden in Nice and was struck not only by its beauty, but also by how different it was from the Japanese gardens she was familiar with. "The flowers were so beautiful and lush, and the beauty was so different from the simple and spare bonsai aesthetic."

The experience motivated her to re-examine the family tradition. Later one of her fellow students in a marketing class did a market analysis on his family's business, a funeral home. Ms Yamada decided to so the same for her father's bonsai nursery. "I still hated it," she recalls, "but doing the market study made me realize the potential of the business."

She eventually decided to return to Omiya and carry on the family tradition. "I decided to see if I could develop the market, and start a bonsai school. I would respect tradition, but find my own space, develop my own way."

Her school has been a quiet success. Her students are mostly women, another departure from tradition. Bonsai was traditionally a man's art, but today 90% of people taking up the art are women, she says. She teaches the basics of bonsai -- care and feeding, watering, pruning -- as well as the finer points, such as aesthetics, history and advanced techniques.

Ms Yamada's own art is a departure from the older styles, though she tries to stay true to the traditional forms. For one thing, she is a woman, pursuing an art form that has been predominantly male for centuries. Her works have soft, distinctly feminine lines. One of her bonsai, in a picturesque style called "yosu ue" (gathered, or forest), in which two or more species of tree live together in the same pot. She said it was only about seven years old, and she would have to monitor it over the next few decades to see how it goes. "Like all bonsai, you have to look at the long term with yosu ue," she said. "You have to be selective, and pick species that will survive together. You have to know the trees."

To the untrained eye, it looks a lot like ikebana, but, she insists, "the two arts come from entirely different traditions, though they both tap the same aesthetic source." Bonsai is deeply related to "sado," or tea ceremony, and principles of Zen Buddhism inform the art.

People have been cultivating bonsai in Japan for almost a thousand years. The art dates from the Kamakura period (1185-1333), when it arrived from China, and flourished in the Edo period (1615 to the Meiji restoration in 1868). It found favor with the gentry, rich merchants and others with the time, the inclination and especially the space, to pursue the demanding art. Maintaining a bonsai garden was, and is, a form of conspicuous consumption.

The original Bonsai Village was in the Hongo area of Tokyo, but the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and the fires that devastated the city afterward, as well as the growing urbanization of the area, convinced the community that it was time to transplant themselves out of the city. So in 1925 the bonsai community moved out, picking Omiya for its good soil and air and healthy distance from Tokyo.

Yamada is one of the best-known names in the bonsai world, and Kaori is the fifth generation to run the business. The garden over which she presides is like a living encyclopedia of the art. Some of the trees in her yard are hundreds of years old, and some are classics. The finest of the lot, her "family tree," as she calls it, is a magnificent 300-year-old Matsu (white pine) started by her great-grandfather and now one of the touchstones of the art.

Lifestyle Japan asked her about the changes in the trees over the years, and Ms Yamada did something probably not many people can do -- she pulled an encyclopedia of classic bonsai off a shelf in her office and took us on a tour of her backyard, pointing out various trees and matching them to the 50-year-old photos in the book. The trees had changed to varying degrees, but all were recognizable and distinctive.

"They're like my 'sempai' (elders)," she said. "They talk to me, tell me how to live. Their "ki," their life force, affects me, I can feel it." They scold her for her mistakes and complain about insects, cold and other afflictions. But in the spring their sap rises, their leaves come out, and the talk turns to life and longevity, survival and beauty.